Altars Archives

At Incite, the worlds of scholarship, community engagement, the arts, and other specialties unite to ask ambitious questions and understand and engage the social world in surprising new ways.

Incite Institute at Columbia University

Artist, organizer, researcher, and director Emilia Yang will offer strategies for decolonizing participatory art, design and witnessing.

OHMA Spring 2025 Workshop Series

In this series, we highlight the work of artists, scholars, and knowledge-keepers whose works attend to what Toni Morrison describes as the “pitched battle between remembering and forgetting.” (Morrison 2019).

Part of the 2024-25 ReMemory: Experiments in Listening, Authorship and Knowledge-Keeping Series:Altars Archives: Strategies for Decolonizing Participatory Art, Design and Witnessing [Virtual Event]Drawing on my experience as a victim/survivor, activist for memory, artist, designer, and researcher, I will share the process of creating <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.museodelamemorianicaragua.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=009klHSCxuh5AI1vNQzSO0KGjl4nbi2Q0M1QLJX9BeE&r=dPueEjMif5iqneplayRpyNTTuvJ-zFidm4Jyf5Uzmr0&m=5tuBEzj9P1c2mjH4Oy5YkV8n8HaxIpAN6zilKUTzMYfUc4ievuMdSCOu_AhYcbRT&s=yElLPadShSpeSpfSXi2YHgdz11PCPnPKkmkSYaN-3Ms&e=" title="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.museodelamemorianicaragua.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=009klHSCxuh5AI1vNQzSO0KGjl4nbi2Q0M1QLJX9BeE&r=dPueEjMif5iqneplayRpyNTTuvJ-zFidm4Jyf5Uzmr0&m=5tuBEzj9P1c2mjH4Oy5YkV8n8HaxIpAN6zilKUTzMYfUc4ievuMdSCOu_AhYcbRT&s=yElLPadShSpeSpfSXi2YHgdz11PCPnPKkmkSYaN-3Ms&e=" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">AMA y No Olvida, Memory Museum Against Impunity</a>. This memory initiative was made in collaboration with the Association Mothers of April (AMA), a collective of families of victims of state violence organized in a context of authoritarian and brutal repression in Nicaragua. This endeavor was informed by the families' use of altars as technologies of remembrance and connection to the spiritual realm to share our individual pain with a broader community. Through this example, I will share strategies for decolonizing participatory art, design, and witnessing through embodied practices.Emilia Yang (She/her/hers/ella) is an artist, designer, organizer, researcher, and director of "AMA y No Olvida, Museum of Memory against Impunity" from Nicaragua. Her art practice utilizes expanded forms of expanded media for the creation of community-based feminist, anti-racist, and transformative justice projects and futures. Her artworks have been exhibited in international spaces such as the Resistance Biennial in Guatemala, the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica, the Museum of Jade and Pre-Columbian Culture in Costa Rica, Casa América and the Museum and Vanguard Art Center Neomudéjar in Spain, Le Commun Contemporary Art Building in Geneva, and the Games and the New Media Summit at Tribeca Film Festival. She has been the recipient of multiple fellowships, including the<a href="https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/press-releases/care-usa-launches-arts-for-gender-equality-fellowship-with-support-from-the-rockefeller-foundation/" title="https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/press-releases/care-usa-launches-arts-for-gender-equality-fellowship-with-support-from-the-rockefeller-foundation/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> Arts for Gender Equality Fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation and CARE</a> USA in 2023 and the<a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/humanities/people/2024-25-fellows/emilia-yang-.html" title="https://lsa.umich.edu/humanities/people/2024-25-fellows/emilia-yang-.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> Hunting Family Faculty Fellow at U-M Institute of the Humanities</a> in 2024. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design with a focus on Anti-Racism by Design.<a href="http://www.emiliayang.org" title="http://www.emiliayang.org" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> www.emiliayang.org</a> About Incite at Columbia UniversityIncite is an interdisciplinary social science research institute at Columbia University.Our mission is to create knowledge for public action—to catalyze conversations that lead to more just, equitable, and democratic societies.For more information, <a href="https://incite.columbia.edu" title="https://incite.columbia.edu" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">visit our site</a>.

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